Sam (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
l33tminion) wrote2009-05-04 09:08 pm
l33tminion) wrote2009-05-04 09:08 pm
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Megatrends: The Central Bureaucracy
Trend #5 of Megatrends: Decentralization. And here's the first chapter that Naisbitt gets totally wrong. The first lead states:
In politics, it does not really matter anymore who is president and Congress has become obsolete.
Ha!
Well, okay, maybe not totally wrong. Congress has since ceded a lot of power over foreign policy through the complete abdication of the power to declare war. But that's no a blow against centralization, it just gives more power to the President. Dramatic tax decreases (especially on the richest) over the past few decades would appear to be ceding power to corporations and oligarchs (not exactly grassroots, but more decentralized than just the government):
(The presidents (and top tax rates) depicted above are (from here): Woodrow Wilson (77%), Franklin Delano Roosevelt (94%), Harry Truman (87%), Lyndon Baines Johnson (77%), Richard Nixon (70%), Ronald Reagan (28%), Bill Clinton (39%), George W. Bush (33%), Barack Obama (40% OMG SOCIALISM))
But the government didn't really give up any power at all (they would have if those cuts were paid for with decreased spending, but the government just took out more debt, moving the claim on taxpayers from "now" to "eventually"). Naisbitt guesses that state politics will become far more important than federal, but since that time, "unfunded mandates" and conditional grants have the federal government sticking their heads far into areas of policy far outside of those powers enumerated in the constitution.
Some of the examples in the chapter seem off: Is the decline of the AMA an example of decentralization? Is the decline of unions? (I doubt that, in many cases that didn't give more power to, say, individual workers.)
Some examples don't seem to have stuck (or come to pass at all): States raising the gas tax after the federal government refused? High speed rail through the midwest? Localized energy production?
The rise of small towns is an interesting case. Certainly, small towns rose in population and influence since the late eighties, but I would argue that they became less small-town-like and more suburban in character.
Will this trend manifest later in the future? Well, some Peakniks certainly suggest that centralized systems will fail first and decentralization will be an inevitable consequence of things falling apart. I'm not sure it's that clear-cut: The federal government et al will be seeking more power to deal with the set of problems that we face, and their are some options afforded by centralized power that can't be done on an ad-hoc level (at least not as quickly). On the other hand, a centralized authority doing the wrong thing can cause no end of trouble... but that says nothing about whether massive decentralization is in our near future or whether that will get pushed further down the line.
In politics, it does not really matter anymore who is president and Congress has become obsolete.
Ha!
Well, okay, maybe not totally wrong. Congress has since ceded a lot of power over foreign policy through the complete abdication of the power to declare war. But that's no a blow against centralization, it just gives more power to the President. Dramatic tax decreases (especially on the richest) over the past few decades would appear to be ceding power to corporations and oligarchs (not exactly grassroots, but more decentralized than just the government):
(The presidents (and top tax rates) depicted above are (from here): Woodrow Wilson (77%), Franklin Delano Roosevelt (94%), Harry Truman (87%), Lyndon Baines Johnson (77%), Richard Nixon (70%), Ronald Reagan (28%), Bill Clinton (39%), George W. Bush (33%), Barack Obama (40% OMG SOCIALISM))
But the government didn't really give up any power at all (they would have if those cuts were paid for with decreased spending, but the government just took out more debt, moving the claim on taxpayers from "now" to "eventually"). Naisbitt guesses that state politics will become far more important than federal, but since that time, "unfunded mandates" and conditional grants have the federal government sticking their heads far into areas of policy far outside of those powers enumerated in the constitution.
Some of the examples in the chapter seem off: Is the decline of the AMA an example of decentralization? Is the decline of unions? (I doubt that, in many cases that didn't give more power to, say, individual workers.)
Some examples don't seem to have stuck (or come to pass at all): States raising the gas tax after the federal government refused? High speed rail through the midwest? Localized energy production?
The rise of small towns is an interesting case. Certainly, small towns rose in population and influence since the late eighties, but I would argue that they became less small-town-like and more suburban in character.
Will this trend manifest later in the future? Well, some Peakniks certainly suggest that centralized systems will fail first and decentralization will be an inevitable consequence of things falling apart. I'm not sure it's that clear-cut: The federal government et al will be seeking more power to deal with the set of problems that we face, and their are some options afforded by centralized power that can't be done on an ad-hoc level (at least not as quickly). On the other hand, a centralized authority doing the wrong thing can cause no end of trouble... but that says nothing about whether massive decentralization is in our near future or whether that will get pushed further down the line.